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THE GEOGRAPHIC PREMISE
The ground is an edge before it is anything else: the town that came later is fixed by the federal geographic-names record (GNIS feature 2397718) at 41.46583 degrees north, 86.48250 degrees west, at 725 feet of elevation. Its plats occupy the southeast part of the northeast quarter of section 23 and the southwest quarter of section 24, township 35 north, range 1 west — the second survey tier from the county's south line, the second range from its west. The Kankakee River bounds Lincoln Township on the west and south, a few miles from the townsite, running in the marsh plain it made; the township itself, 13,395 acres by Chapman's area table, is the county's southwest corner block, formed in 1866 out of Liberty Township. What follows is the record of this edge ground before any plat was drawn on it: what the ice laid down, what water did with it, who held it, what instrument took it, and who arrived first.